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A Regal Artform's New Muse:
Perky the Hippo

By

Kelly Crow

Updated Sept. 8, 2006 12:01 a.m. ET

When collector Richard Baron Cohen decided three years ago to commission a historic set of porcelain dinnerware, he sought out a storied producer, Denmark's Royal Copenhagen Porcelain. He selected its most prestigious pattern, a 1790 design created for Catherine the Great. Finally, he enlisted the factory's semiretired master painter to give each one of the 144 pieces its crowning touch -- hippopotami.

Yesterday, Sotheby's in New York mounted an exhibit of Royal Copenhagen's Hippopotamus Service, calling it "the...